If buying online is okay for you, I can recommend the Ribble Winter/Audax. One of their stock builds is $836 with Tiagra and including fenders.

This past winter I had to replace the frame of my three-seasons commuter. My requirements were similar to yours, with the addition of, must be aluminum, and must be available as a frame or frameset only.

I bought the 58mm Winter/Audax frame, Dedacciai Black Rain fork, and a Cane Creek headset for $274. Shipping to the US was $80. It took a couple of days before shipping while they installed the headset, then it arrived two days after it was shipped. (They ship Royal Mail Global Priority. When it hits JFK, that translates to Express Mail Overnight, which requires a signature for delivery.)

A friend is a framebuilder, and before building it up, we checked it on his frame alignment table. The front triangle was 0.001" (one one-thousandth of an inch) out of square, and from the head tube to the rear dropouts, it was a half-millimeter off on the drive side. He rated it as well within acceptable tolerances, and especially good for such a cheap frame. Just to be OCD, a couple of passes of a rat tail file through the drive side dropout evened things up.

I moved over all my old components, including the SKS P-35 fenders, and 25mm Continental Grand Prix 4-Seasons tires. (It will fit 28s, but Contis run a smidge undersized, so maybe not everyone's 28s.)

I've been riding it since the end of February. On the road, it rides very well--certainly better than the Y2K Trek 1000 frame it replaced. It doesn't beat me up at all, and it handles bumps and pavement irregularities with aplomb. Yet, the bottom bracket and driveline are stiff and responsive. The bike sprints and climbs as if it's assisted.

Handling-wise, it's well-mannered in traffic. It darts around potholes without fuss. Although the geometry of the frame and fork I chose makes it slightly "low-trail" meaning it strongly prefers to go straight and upright, needing to be held down a bit in corners. This is expected behavior for an Audax bike (Randonneur bike in the US) to compensate for the typical handlebar bag weighting down the front a bit.

The bike's only bad habit, which is something most road frames suffer (as did my old one), is that when I get more than 30-35 pounds of groceries on the back (I've carried 65 pounds on this bike to date) and I get the panniers far enough back so my big feet don't have heel strike, (I wear 45s to 47s depending on the shoe and I run 175mm cranks) the tail sort of wags the dog. With heavier loads I just have to keep a little more weight on the bars, and keep myself smooth. There's no flinging the bike about when loaded.